Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen has said she expects interest rates to rise this year, in what would be the first rate hike from near zero since the 2008 economic crisis.

Yellen said that if the US economy continues to strengthen, “it will be appropriate at some point this year to take the initial step to raise the federal funds rate”.

Federal Reserve says June too early to begin raising interest rates

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However, she cautioned the market not to expect any rapid increase in rates. “After we begin raising the federal funds rate, I anticipate that the pace of normalization is likely to be gradual,” she said in a speech in Rhode Island on Friday.

“The various headwinds that are still restraining the economy, as I said, will likely take some time to fully abate, and the pace of that improvement is highly uncertain.

“We have no intention of embarking on a pre-set course of increases in the federal funds rate after the initial increase,” she added.

Her comments come just a few weeks before the next Federal Reserve policy meeting, on 16-17 June. At the last meeting the committee indicated the central bank was unlikely to raise rates until later in the year, with most economists pencilling in a September rate raise.

Yellen said that while the official unemployment rate of 5.4% is approaching what many Federal Reserve officials consider to be consistent with full employment, the jobless rate “probably does not fully capture the extent of slack in the labor market”.

She also expressed disappointment that big US companies are not increasing employees wage cheques as they prosper from the improving economy, and warned that the roughly 2% increase in hourly wages throughout the recovery indicated that “the labor market has not fully healed”.

“There are at least some encouraging signs of a pickup so far this year,” she said. “The fact that some large companies such as Walmart and Target have announced wage increases for their employees also might be a sign that larger wage gains are on the horizon.”